I think a lot of us follow sports for the same reason we follow politics: we just want someone to root for.
I follow the New York Mets. As I write these words, they are mid-way through their first full week of spring training. The last two weeks of February are usually a singularly glorious time for baseball fans. "Pitchers and catchers" report around February 13, a full two weeks before position players do – I put those three words in quotation marks because the phrase that they make up elicits a special feeling in people who share a love of the game. They evoke a familiar optimism, a phrase that you may not hear anywhere else. They signal a beginning to the beginning of what could be that glorious championship season that we have each been waiting for, the opening notes of a glorious symphony. For a championship season is not an isolated miracle – it confirms what we always hoped: that the losing teams of the past were just the building blocks of a winner.
But this year, those opening notes sound a bit out of tune. Familiar optimism has been replaced by a haunting ambivalence. The confession of New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez that he did in fact use performance-enhancing steroids as a member of the Texas Rangers in 2003 casts a shadow over these two weeks, and all of spring training, and all of the 2009 season and more. Sure, the shadow of steroid-use is nothing new to baseball fans. Serious allegations and positive tests have been part of the culture for a decade. So why is the Alex Rodriguez case different than the case of Jason Giambi, Roger Clemens, or, for that matter, Barry Bonds?
In fact, A-Rod stain is a direct result of the Bonds stain. When Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record in 2006, it was a difficult time for baseball fans. As a child, I remember reading about Hank Aaron’s home run record of 754, then seeing the best power hitter I knew, Gary Carter, max out at 324. I assumed the record would never be broken. Of course, Carter’s season-best was only 32 home runs, but watching him bat clean-up during the 1986 championship Mets season (as a 6-year-old), I thought he was the best power hitter of all time.
For me, Aaron’s home run record was the holy grail of sports numbers, in a sport where numbers mean everything. Getting to see that record broken should have been a magical event, an affirmation that impossible dreams can indeed become reality. But, of course, by the time Bonds broke the record, the fact that he had cheated was common knowledge, so we swallowed our bile, clapped politely, and tried to take note of this moment whose future was unknown. We hoped that the summer of 2007 was our winter of discontent. Channeling the optimism of spring training, we hoped that someone who was unquestionably free of steroids would go on to break Bonds’s tainted record.
That man was supposed to be A-Rod. He was (and still is) on pace to break the record some time in 2012. He was tall and lean, muscular, yes, but not bulky. Unlike Bonds, his body still looked basically the same as it did when his career began. His power numbers had, for the most part, been consistent over the course of his career. Of course, he had no visible personality – he was known for saying all the right things but rarely acting as if he meant them – but personality was not what was needed. The only thing that the public was looking to him for was basic integrity. They were asking that he not cheat.
As it turns out, he already had. He has admitted to cheating in 2003, the year that 103 major league players tested positively for steroids, four years before Bonds broke the record. They participated in the random testing willingly, in an agreement approved by the players’ union under the condition that their names would never be released by MLB. They haven’t; A-Rod’s name was leaked. But only one positive test of A-Rod’s has been leaked, and it’s the only one he has copped to. For all we know, he has been juicing every year since then. If and when he breaks Aaron’s record, his final home run count, be it 763, 800, or 1000 will be just as dirty as Bonds’s number.
All of which make me think about politics, George W. Bush, and why he should be held accountable and tried for war crimes. When Bush was in the White House, he and his cohorts misled the American people into war. This much cannot be denied. We were told there were WMDs in Iraq. There weren’t. We were told that Saddam Hussein had bought yellowcake uranium from Niger. He hadn’t. We were told that the Iraqi people wanted freedom and democracy. Well, the jury is still out on that one.
But when evidence was presented, over the course of a couple years, that Bush was wrong on all these counts, dutiful citizens looked the other way. News media and late-night comics did a great job of minimizing him to a punch line, but he was never held accountable for his crimes. He never had to face re-election after the worst of the truth came out. If he had lost re-election after deceiving us into war, that would have at least been a public repudiation of his presidency. While he did leave office with the lowest approval rating in history, no such formal repudiation was ever made. No door was ever slammed shut in his face.
As a candidate, Barack Obama said that he would look into whether or not war crimes had been committed by this administration. No public investigation has been launched. While he neatly avoided the question of impeachment during the campaign (since he was a sitting senator, if he signaled support for it, he might have actually been expected to follow through), other Democratic candidates like John Edwards said that they opposed impeaching Bush because the country needed to move forward not look backward. Only Dennis Kucinich carried the flame of accountability, presenting thirty-five separate articles for impeachment.
Right now, George Bush is back at the ranch in Crawford, Texas. With the exception of a forthcoming book, for which he will be paid millions, I think we can safely say that he will avoid the limelight for the rest of his life. He is, as Bob Dylan once sang, "free to sip martinis and watch the sun rise."
On the other hand, Dick Cheney is still at work. He is free to publicly criticize our current administration for closing Guantanamo Bay and restricting the use of torture. He has been on record as saying that the Obama administration has already made us more susceptible to a terrorist attack. And guess what? If we do get attacked anytime in the next four or eight years, Dick Cheney will have been vindicated.
Let me repeat that: Dick Cheney will have been vindicated. Not tried. Not convicted. Not even forgotten. Vindicated. And as a result, the country will probably swing back to conservatism.
And with such a swing, let’s count the tens of thousands of young voters who became involved with Obama’s campaign but will now be disillusioned. Let’s count the millions of poverty-stricken American families who will receive less help with a new Republican administration. And let’s probably go ahead and start counting the dead in the next war that such an administration would start.
But it all can be avoided if President Obama appoints a special investigation into the Bush administration for war crimes. Even without a conviction, it would cement in the history books and in the minds of Americans that the Bush/Cheney administration had committed serious offenses. Evidence would be presented that would convince many Americans that Bush and Cheney were treasonous. And it would shift the argument from the result of their policies, whether or not they kept us safe, to the policies themselves and the basic Constitutional rights that were trampled on in the process.
So what does this all have to do with A-Rod? Unlike most young people I know, I am disillusioned with and disappointed in our current political system. Exactly like most people I know, I am disillusioned with and disappointed by baseball.
Until baseball fully acknowledges its past, it can never be free from it. Baseball must not just publicly condemn those who used steroids in the past. Players such as A-Rod must be punished. But to punish only athletes like A-Rod who admit their transgressions sets a counterproductive precedent; it would discourage athletes from admitting their guilt.
I want MLB to release the names of the other 103 "athletes" who tested positive in 2003. I don’t care if they thought it was anonymous or not. They cheated, and whatever rights their union bargained for should be null and void.
I want President Obama to find a way to try President Bush for war crimes. I want it to be known that if a public servant abuses the trust of the American citizens, he will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Just like the asterisk that should be placed next to this entire decade of baseball, we will never be free from the crimes of President Bush. The economy may get better and this war may end. But until America acknowledges the truth of what went on in the past eight years, we will never fully trust our leaders again. Barack Obama should not ask us to forget about the Bush years. He should help us remember them forever.
I want future lawmakers and athletes to look back at Bush and A-Rod and know what happens to those who cheat.
I want Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and George Bush and Bernie Madoff to go to jail so that we know that our legal system will not protect criminals who are rich and powerful.
I want the Mets to win the World Series this year. And every year.
I want politics and baseball to be as pure as they were when I was a boy. I want Senator Paul Simon and catcher Gary Carter.
I want my illusions back.